Reports are coming out of China that the government has made a total of 460 arrests of computer hackers so far this year. This figure is an effective admission by Chinese officials that the country has the same problem as here in the west – namely, large numbers of IT-literate people who are crossing over into dark hat hacker territory.
According to Claire Sellick, Event Director for Infosecurity Europe, as if this number was not an eye opener in itself, the Chinese government has revealed that arrests of hackers have soared by 80 per cent compared to last year. Infosecurity Europe will be held at Earls Court, London 19-21 April 2011.
"China’s Ministry of Public Security has described the hacker situation in the country as very grim and, whilst it observes that a number of computers in companies have little or no effective security measures, it really does illustrate the scale of the problem," she said. "China is rapidly entering the ascendant in the IT stakes, with the country now boasting the largest number of mobile phones of any country in the world. It’s also clear that the country’s Internet infrastructure is also growing rapidly, along with the number of Internet users," she added.
The Infosecurity Europe event director went on to say that the media has been full of oblique references to western computer systems being attacked by hacktivists who are sympathetic to the Chinese cause. Some outlets have even reported that the government was behind the attacks on Google late last year, a topic that cropped up in the current raft of documents being released in the Wikileaks saga (http://bit.ly/hjoFu0), she noted.
The crucial thing to remember, says Sellick, is that the rise of the internet means that the world has become a global village, meaning that it just as easy for hackers in a Chinese city to attack a company IT resource in the UK, as it is for a hacker elsewhere in the UK. The internet, she added, has changed many aspects of the IT and business world, and whilst most of those changes have been for the better, some are not.
It’s against this backdrop that she says that it has become imperative for organisations to deploy the very best security technology to defend their digital data assets. "But keeping up to speed with these trends, as well as abreast of the latest security defence technologies and strategies, has almost become a full-time job," she said.
"This is why we’re encouraging IT and business professionals to make space in their diaries for the next Infosecurity Europe event, which takes place at Earls Court 1, London, between April 19 and 21, 2011," she added.
For more on the Chinese hacker arrests and ministry comments: http://bit.ly/f3xyOP
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